‘The Game,’ Season 4, Episode 10, ‘Never Surrender’: TV Recap

As its debut season on BET comes to a close, “The Game” is doing its best to wind up all the drama. Unfortunately, this hasn’t made for the tightest storytelling. Instead of everything making more sense, each character’s storyline is making less sense.

For instance, Tasha Mack: last episode, she seemed perfectly okay with being single, and in this episode, she’s absolutely heartbroken over the break-up with her ex-boyfriend Danté. Since she has too much pride to tell anyone the two have officially called it quits, Melanie implores her to plan Danté a huge party for his 25th birthday. Absurdity ensues, as Tasha goes along with Melanie’s plan and invites the who’s-who of San Diego to attend Dante’s birthday at the Vault knowing good and well he knows nothing about the party.

Throughout the evening, Tasha attempts to act like Danté is around somewhere but she doesn’t know where. When Melanie calls for his cake to be brought out and the candles on it to be blown, Tasha’s cover-up looks like it is about to be revealed until Danté makes a surprise appearance. He plays along, as though he knew about the party and of course, Tasha is both surprised and relieved by Dante’s arrival. When the two are later alone, they seem to have made up, but in a nonsensical twist, Tasha later tells Melanie Dante broke up with her.

Meanwhile, Tasha’s son Malik is trying to take care of his own set of problems at the same party. Parker is still blackmailing Malik into sleeping with him, this time in the bathroom of the club where they are both partying. Malik’s new girlfriend Jenna is there as is Parker’s husband, who is also the owner of the Sabers. Parker tells Malik if he doesn’t meet her in the bathroom she will tell everyone he raped her. For whatever reason, the show’s writers find this whole rape storyline perfectly okay, but they don’t even use it to teach what is surely a young audience a valuable lesson about rape. At the very least, there should be a PSA done by the cast at the end to warn people not to take the issue lightly. But alas, there is none, and Malik never scolds Parker for attempting to frame him with rape charges.

Instead, he attempts to empower her to leave her husband, all while she tries to undress him in a bathroom stall. When Parker finally gets the clue, she backs off Malik and tells off her husband in front of the club. In the midst of her tirade, Malik is leaving the club with Jenna but pauses as she sees Parker confronting her husband. In that moment she outs herself to her husband as having slept with Malik.

Jenna runs away from Malik, Parker walks away from her husband, and the owner’s bodyguards rush Malik to jump him. Everything gets settled when Malik’s bodyguard shoots his gun in the air, twice. The team’s owner runs away with his bodyguards and warns Malik he’s in for a “world of hurt.”

We’ll be waiting to see what that entails in the final two episodes, but judging from the way the season has played out thus far, we don’t expect the “world of hurt” to make much sense.